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John O'Reilly, Self Portrait, 1965, paper montage on old embissed mount, image: 5 3/8" x 7 13/16"

 

John O'Reilly: Art From Four Decades
with works on paper by Rembrandt van Rijn, Joseph Cornell and others

Trevor Fairbrother: curator

November 13, 2009 - January 5, 2010

 

For Immediate Release

 

A note on the exhibition — Trevor Fairbrother, curator


This grouping of works by John O'Reilly does not constitute a balanced chronological survey. The artist is a friend, and I wanted to craft a personal tribute to his untamed imagination, sly humor, and keen intelligence. During the selection process, Self-Portrait (1965) emerged as a sort of talisman. It is one of the first photographic collages he made, and I've been eager to see this tender, gently optimistic statement installed near to examples of his recent, comparatively bold and explosive productions. I am thinking in particular of the new series inspired by the exceptional art and distressing life of the American modernist Marsden Hartley.

O'Reilly calls his pictures photomontages: like all collages they are unique works of art in which fragments selected from diverse sources have been glued together as a new whole. He made the first examples by combining motifs he had cut from magazines and books. In 1984 he began using a Polaroid camera to expand his arsenal of source materials. This camera allowed him to re-photograph any image and was also a quick means to depict his own face and body. He likes to group still life items around printed images and then photograph the vignette; he can then clip a part of that picture and use it as one of the fragments in a larger photomontage.

Various strategies come into play as O'Reilly struggles to capture his visions on paper. Sometimes he makes a composition with the seamless look of an ordinary photograph, knowing that a bracing or uncanny subject is intensified when rendered with photo-like verisimilitude. On other occasions he punctures reality by drawing upon sundry styles and movements from the past. His art often delights with its visually dramatic echoes of Romantic exaggeration, Expressionist distortion, Cubist fracturing, or Surrealist unhinging.

The precision with which O'Reilly maneuvers every detail in a composition fuels the narrative immediacy of his art. For years he favored black and white pictures because he felt that color hampered him in his quest to depict fantasy worlds, dreams, and ideals. He orchestrates linear vectors, rhymes and abstract counterpoints to establish a restless atmosphere, suggestive of inner dialogue or turmoil. O'Reilly's pictures may have a spiritual and meditative air, or they may confront carnal experiences with fearless, defiant, or joyful directness. Aided by its music-like sense of motion and flow, all of his art reflects on the individual's life journey in a rough, commonplace world.

I have mixed a few works on paper by other artists into this installation. I hope that the act of comparison sheds new light on O'Reilly's sophisticated, subtle achievement and inspires viewers to ponder his love of art history. One of his favorite themes is the view of an artist engaged in work. The private setting that fosters creativity and emotional fulfillment fascinates him, and he is well aware of Picasso's gifted exploitation of the painter's studio as a charged erotic realm. Another O'Reilly leitmotif is the picture within a picture. This visual device triggers the reflection that new art is inescapably linked to the works of the past, and reminds us that every artist responds, perhaps subconsciously, to historic forebears.

Characters from celebrated paintings and sculptures abound in this oeuvre, as do portraits of illustrious artists and writers. When O'Reilly places his own image alongside a historical figure in one of his photomontages he is building a community or family. Whether they are creative idols or ordinary people, he joins with individuals whose thoughts, experiences, and humanity sustain him.

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John O'Reilly grew up in suburban New Jersey and was an ardent Catholic during his youth. He studied painting at Syracuse University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
From 1964 to 1991 he and his partner, sculptor James Tellin, worked at the Worcester State Hospital, developing and practicing art therapy for patients with mental illness. They remain Worcester residents.
O'Reilly's photomontages were included in the 1995 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is owned by numerous museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and                                 the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 

 

 

 

For further information please contact Howard Yezerski Gallery 617.262.0550 Tuesday - Saturday 10-5:30pm